According to the Reichsbank, this was no longer realistic. For years the rates at which goods were exchanged with each other had not been determined by the anonymous and continuous workings of the market system, but by a series of ad hoc and inconsistent political decisions. The consequence was that for foreign trade purposes the Reichsmark now lacked any well-defined value. The purchasing power of the Reichsmark in foreign transactions depended entirely on which commodity it was measured in terms of and from where those goods were sourced.
